On a Midnight Plane to Georgia— I mean, North Carolina

[canyonwalker]

West Virginia Travelog #1
SFO Airport - Fri, 15 Sep 2023. 10pm

Tonight Hawk and I are at SFO airport, embarking on a week long trip to the east coast. Our flight leaves a few minutes before midnight and will arrive about 5 hours later in Charlotte, North Carolina. Once at CLT we'll rent a car and drive north across the foothills of North Carolina, across the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and into West Virginia. Why West Virginia? In two words: bucket list.

They Moved My Bucket!

Oh, I've been to West Virginia before. Visiting the state is not the bucket list item I'm traveling to fulfill. I ticked that bucket list item years ago! The bucket list at play here is Visiting all US national parks. And that's a neverending odyssey because they keep moving my bucket!

Three years ago Congress designated a new national park, New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in West Virginia. It went onto our list right away. Now we're getting to it.

Ladies and gentlemen, as you get buckled into your seats, sit back, relax, and get ready with your buckets.

Backlog Almost Cleared

I had hoped to finish blogging about my previous trip, the PNW trip two weekends ago, before embarking on this one. I didn't finish— though I have come close! My most recent blog, Dam, That's Big!, is #16 in the series. I've already posted #18, wrapping up that trip, so I've got just one more to go.

Comments

[some_other_dave]

Why are you going to NC in order to get to WV? Looks like there are closer major airports, and probably much closer minor ones...

[canyonwalker]

It's 3.5 hours by car from CLT, which we were able to get a non-stop red-eye to. Any smaller airport would've involved taking a connection. That lost time plus schedule inefficiency would've meant a longer total door-to-door time.

Moreover, as it turns out we are splitting this trip between southern WV and the mountains of NC. Charlotte works way better for driving back to at the end of our trip.